Escape

Nick Masesso, Jr.

“If America’s for the winners; what’s for the losers”?  Junior Bonner – Sam Peckinpah 

Well, those boys just couldn’t keep still. It was only Thursday night and the late spring sun was still dancing vapor trails over the Golden Gate Bridge on San Francisco Bay and there they were, once again, hanging with the Bowery Boys. It was a real tough crowd this time of day; hard drinkers with sullen shadows; longshoremen with grizzled hands and hobos rolling in off the gutter with a fresh fiver from a deposit at the blood bank. Joey and Roy were as fidgety as trapped animals and they would not be tamed. They knew this was not going to end well so they took their pleasures as they could and to them living any other way was a waste of life.

Joey tucked a C-note under his empty shot glass and…

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Armor of Innocence

Nick Masesso, Jr.

He could tell by the way her face lit up each time she smiled which was often that there was joy and passion and a lust for life still pulsing inside her battered heart. This occurred with each breath out as if it were the face she showed the world. Yet with each breath in as her face relaxed he saw the miles of bad road she’d traveled set deep inside the crevices around her gentle mouth. He thought the rhythmic in and out breathing that changed her face was the war she was fighting with herself just like some of the hold outs he knew who had yet to give up on that youthful hope of innocence.

In his youth he sought the faces in the crowd that met his as they passed on the street with a knowing grin as if they shared a universal secret that it…

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Christmas for the KKK

is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” – ― Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems

The rain threatens snow tomorrow, while today begins Fall’s last days of temperatures in the 40’s; all 30’s from now on with the futures escalator bullet headed down. Such as it is here in the north country. Six months of winter makes a man appreciate summer all that much more.

We pick-up Thanksgivings organic Turkey Tuesday from the health food store; the pumpkin pie Wednesday from the local bakery. Carol’s birthday and Christmas presents are all lassoed and for now I’ll just ignore the bills that’ll come due later; anything to get my mind off the god damn presidential election.

If it weren’t for my woman I’d brush aside the whole festive seasons spectacle like most years when I bachelor the sucker. But, costs and other annoyances of having a full-time night woman aside, they do, if you have a good one and here I’ve been blessed; sooth the savage beast inside every man and tame his hermit, recluse persuasions. I won’t be exactly singing Jingle Bells or anything of the sort but life sure is better with company.

The best part of the worst part of winter is having a decent reason to blow off the gym and other existential errands and recline in luxury under my reading lamp and perform that task that allows me the ammo to write; reading. Miles Davis autobiography has been inhaled and Bruce’s (The Boss) auto-bio was ordered and rumored to be en-route but I do believe I got ripped off; shit. I’ll have to devour some more Kerouac or Bukowski while I re-order from a reputable seller and wait for its arrival.

Meanwhile I can’t push aside the ugly wind blowing hard across the globe; a rash of strong men rulers chosen in many countries, some where we don’t normally see that kind of thing, in response to perceived or actual chaos. It’s a Let Daddy Fix-It thing I guess and well I suppose in a democracy we get the government we deserve as de Tocqueville opined. But this new phenomenon is something to keep a good eye on.

This isn’t Nixon, who for all his character faults, while similar to our new headache, at least knew a thing or two. Nixon gave us the E.P.A. and made nice with Russia and China when those things were thought to be impossible. Nixon didn’t work for himself; didn’t feather his own nest. Mini-Mussolini is already doing so. Hey, Prime Minister Abe of Japan – Meet my daughter Ivanka – She’s opening a hotel in Japan – Y’all look out for her; ya hear?

We hated Nixon for prolonging the Viet Nam war for eight more bloody years and for having character flaws of Shakespearean complexity; insecurity, resentment and the urge to lash out at those he perceived as enemies, like the present president-elect, but we more so felt sorry for one so flawed as a human being. Trump, god help us, so revels in his too long to list geological size imperfections that he’s made it normal to express his and by proxy our, worst instincts. We judge alone, secluded in our own silo-bubble and hate on those who do not share our views. This is our collective disease.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) there have been more than 701 incidents of harassment or intimidation reported following Trump’s election. Most occurred in K-12 schools and on university campuses. Many, though not all incidents, involved direct references to the Trump campaign.

Not much to do but wait it out; certain one so odious will fold in shame under the weight of his own corruption and thereby redeem us; warned never to be so vengeful against the “establishment” again, stay frosty and keep on writing.

Best wishes for Happy Holidays. #presidentelecttrump #trumptrain #antitrump #trump #mini-Mussolini

Pivot Point

“Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall!” –
John Dickinson; Founding Father

My girlfriends tears have turned to angry resolve. She yearns to tear apart the edifice of the fascist brute terrorizing her dreams and render his ascendency asunder. My best friend here, undoubtedly a Trump voter, seems a bit giddy. I want to tell him, like Trump. “I hear things”. Also like Trump, I don’t know if its true and since the outcome is settled I care less but I hear Trump won Wisconsin by 27,000 votes yet 300,000 voters were denied a ballot because they did not have a photo I.D. Therein, I suppose, lay the rigging.

Later today Trump will receive his first true comprehensive security briefing, wherein he is made aware of all our most highly guarded secrets. It is a rife of information Barack Obama was heard to have said when he received it, “I wanted to jump out of a window”. Perhaps this will level out our puffed-up braggart President elect.

I’ve found myself saying over the past several days when questioned about this rare phenomenon; “Well, he can’t be as bad as I think he is”. And though my stomach still churns every time I consider this sub-genius as our leader my nature steers me back to considering and acting out what will be my part in an outcome that represents the greater good.

Perhaps once we sweep away the lengthy litany of verbal transgressions from our normative societal behavior that the Trump himself has spewed and judge what comes next on what comes next from our confused and under qualified leader; those actions will lead us towards our next move. Meanwhile we have to hope that this man, positioned uniquely in history to do enormous good; does just that.

We are it seems clear stuck with him for now. And while I’m fully aware of all the apocalyptic predictions and fears and in my deepest heart of hearts share many of them, my higher self tells me no one man, even the first true populist ever elected, can throw a monkey wrench onto the gears of our lives and stop our forward progress; let alone render us crippled. And if I’m wrong and any one man can ruin our 240 year old experiment in self-government, the greatest idea in history; then I suppose we deserve it. #presidentelecttrump

Dead Air

“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too. “ — Paulo Coelho, “The Alchemist”

My woman, prostrate on our bed, is crying; scared she says, that being a woman, a Mexican and disabled, three things she’s heard the president-elect sling hateful rhetoric at, she’ll be deported, or shanghaied to some internment camp to be used as forced labor to build his promised border wall. I tell her not to worry; that such notions are absurd. But since that was the same advise I’ve given her for the past six months, a mortal lock certainty America would never elect such an odious character, she’s less than sedated by my views.

I have mixed feelings. Part of me believes the genius of our three equal branches of government, despite all being controlled more or less by one Party, will restrain the worst impulses of the rabble that has seized the levers of power. Another part of me fantasizes standing on a street corner like Lenin; screaming Revolution. My overarching desire though, is that the losers, the middle-class left-behinds, with nothing but the dead and dying back in their little towns, after delivering the biggest fuck you in American political history, get what they deserve; without the need to have tanks in the streets.

I was tempted to turn on right-wing talk radio today, ubiquitous in my present environs of northwestern Wisconsin, just to see if it was all just dead air; thinking what will Rush and his ilk bloviate about now that they’ve gotten all they ever claimed to have wanted. Their time for bitching is over; time to govern now. Time to deliver.

Meanwhile a nauseous wave of revulsion washed over fifty million voters coast to coast in the past few days; leaving those who voted anti-charlatan bent over retching and bleeding from the eyes. The shock turned to shame at the reality that one so execrable was selected to lead. I suppose my most honest feeling is ashamed; ashamed my fellow citizens, so long aggrieved to be sure, still, would hand over the reins of our government to the epitome of the ugly American.

The winners have triumphed. The battle field has been cleared of the dead and the wounded have all been shot. Now, protocol and good form dictate that the new president get a one year honeymoon from criticism in the hope he’ll do good. The die-hard will oppose, professional opposition will regroup and to the victors go the spoils. Basically the winners get to write the checks.

I’m not big on hope. I believe once you’re down to hope; things are damn-near hopeless. But just maybe, perhaps, the awesome responsibility to provide for the greater good or the daily security briefings that turn every president’s hair prematurely gray or the desire for legacy every seventy year old man harbors will transform in this unlikely mortal a sense of duty and subsequently transform his greed for attention, hopefully finally satiated, into an understanding that history will record his acts and forever taint or tarnish or burnish his much personally coveted name.

Perhaps our attitude ought to be that of the patriotic symbol of the American eagle emblazoned on all our money. In one talon we/the eagle hold 13 arrows and in the other olive branches. It seems certain that the hand we use in future will depend on what actions this accidental president takes. #presidentelecttrump